Silver Wings

by Grace Livingston Hill

  At the bottom of the pile she found a little worn Bible with limp black covers and the name “John Dunleith” and “Edinburgh University” with a recent date below. She opened her eyes wider and turned the leaves with deeper interest. Had the young man been to a foreign university? Curious his aunt had not mentioned it. But then, he was a silent fellow. Perhaps she did not know it, as she had owned that she had seen very little of him since he was sixteen. Well, that accounted for his general air of culture and refinement.

  She felt a curious triumph in finding him out as a student, since Barry had tried to discount him. She felt a deeper interest in the young man.

  She turned the pages and found bits of paper marking certain chapters, with the references written on the paper, and idly she glanced at them, but they meant little or nothing to her and she soon threw down the books and began to dress for the evening, this time donning a filmy turquoise chiffon. She resolved more than ever that she would not be ignored. She would win that man from his strange reticence. He was probably surrounded by a wall of reserve, and she must find a way to break through and bewitch him. She had never failed before when she had really tried, and of course she was not going to fail now. So she threw a string of gleaming crystals over her head and hurried down with a lovely bloom upon her cheeks and an uplifted dreamy look in her turquoise eyes. She stopped at Amory’s door on her way down and left the Bible, and Amory could not help admiring her loveliness. Could she have misjudged her? How lovely she was in that blue frock! It did not seem possible that she could be so false. But why had she wanted the Bible?

  Amory had not been called down to tea on the terrace, much to her own relief, for she did not feel in the mood for small talk and filling in. Neither, she observed, was the young minister present. Diana held court with Barry and Fred and Clarence, though she cast occasional surreptitious glances toward the garden gate.

  Amory’s tea was brought to her room, and afterward she sat till the long shadows outside had lengthened into twilight, having no urge to turn on her lights and read. She would have liked to go to church again, but the long mile and a half over the dark country road with great high hedges on either hand and only strangers living behind them made her hesitate. Perhaps when she had been here longer and gotten accustomed to the way in daytime, she might venture at night. Or perhaps, sometime when Christine was off duty she might persuade her to accompany her.

  So she sat by her window watching the stars appear one by one, watching the purple mountains fade into velvet darkness, listening to the little sleepy insects and the tree toads down in the woods, and feeling terribly lonely. Perhaps, too, without knowing it, she was watching for the coming of a plane, listening for the hum of a great motor.

  Downstairs the sound of music broke forth, jazz and laughter. How different it all was from home and the Sunday evenings Aunt Hannah and Aunt Jocelyn loved. Presently, while she sat alone and the darkness deepened, with only a luminous hint of the late-coming moon over the eastern mountain, she found the tears flowing softy down, and putting her head down on the arm of the chair, she had a good hard cry. It was in the midst of that that Christine tapped at her door and told her someone wanted her on the telephone.

  With her heart in her mouth from quick alarm she hurried down the back stairs to the telephone behind the dining room. What had happened at home? Was Aunt Hannah worse? That was surely the only thing that would cause Aunt Jocelyn to waste money on long-distance telephoning! Oh, why had she ever come away?

  With trembling hand she took up the receiver and called that frightened “Hello!” then heard that strong young voice greeting her across those hundreds of miles!

  And while all this had been going on Diana had been in church! Yes, actually! No, the minister had not taken her. She had initiated the movement herself. After refusing more than once to ride with Barry, she told him she would go with him, providing he would take her where she wanted to go.

  He readily agreed, although she did not tell him their destination until they arrived at the chapel.

  Barry was astounded, but he acceded, for he knew Diana of old. When she was determined do something, she did it. Into the chapel they went. However, there was more than one way to thwart her purpose. Barry determined that Diana should have no opportunity to study her preacher during that evening. To that end he exerted himself as only he knew how to do. He sang at the top of his very fine tenor voice and invented clever paraphrases of the words that were irresistible. He drew clever caricatures of the minister and the worshippers in the flyleaf of the hymnbook. He put his arm around Diana rather openly; he reached for her hand and played with her rings. He talked almost out loud with a running fire of wit that was convulsing. If Diana had been spiritually inclined, these things would have been only annoying; as it was they annoyed her neighbors, and merely amused her, as Barry had meant they should. Diana had no standards by which to judge herself. She perhaps did not know how utterly obnoxious she was making herself to John Dunleith, nor how completely she was undoing any impression she had intended to make by coming to church.

  Diana laughed and whispered a great deal herself, showing her utter indifference to the comfort of those about her so plainly that finally one gray-haired woman turned around and looked at her, whereupon the two aliens went off into ill-suppressed mirth that shook the seat and caused others to turn and look at them in scorn.

  John Dunleith could not fail to notice all this. Perhaps both Diana and Barry meant that he should. But he went on with his preaching without seeming to look their way until he came to the close. Then he seemed to turn and look straight in their direction. Just one arresting sentence Diana heard—and suddenly she sobered, a startled look in her eyes. He spoke, and he seemed to be speaking to her soul.

  “You, who were meant to be in the image of God, what will He say to you when you come to stand before the great white throne? Can anyone see God in you?”

  Barry tried to distract her at this point, calling attention to an old man who had fallen asleep with his mouth open. But Diana did not look at him. She had her eyes on the minister. She was trying to turn over this remarkable question. She did not know why it seemed to pierce her heart like a sudden sword thrust. She did not want to feel what he was saying, but she did. Great white throne! Why should she have to stand before a great white throne? She had never been afraid of anything in her life, but she somehow felt afraid of those words.

  “Let’s go!” she said suddenly, as the sermon closed with a brief prayer, and while the last hymn was being announced they crowded out past three people and left the church. The eyes of the minister as he announced the closing hymn had a sad, stern look, but his closing prayer was very tender. When the people crowded around to speak to him afterward, he was as cordial as usual. One of the old elders spoke about the strangers who had made a disturbance, and the minister’s eyes grew sad again.

  “Yes,” said he regretfully, “I’m afraid they don’t know the Lord. They need praying for.”

  “I fear they’re beyond that!” said the sharp old elder spitefully. “I think it would be wasted time.”

  “Does anybody ever get past the need of prayer?” asked John Dunleith, and he went out thoughtfully into the starlight, with Neddy walking proudly by his side.

  They came up through the driveway and skirted the house to get to the side entrance, and as they passed the long windows on the terrace a wave of jazz from the radio burst forth straight from some roof garden or cabaret in New York, and Dunleith could see Diana in Barry’s close embrace, dancing as if her whole soul were in the movement.

  She would have been surprised if she had known that John Dunleith went up to his room and knelt to pray for her trifling little soul. Perhaps it would have frightened her if she could have seen into the future.

  The moon rose, and the midnight came. The radio was turned off, and the guests at Briarcliffe Manor sought their beds, for there was a long day planned for the morrow, and they were all eager to be ready f
or it. Diana had been one of the first to yawn and say she had had enough of the day and was going to bed. And when Diana was gone somehow the spice of life was wanting, and they all trooped off after her.

  The servants went about turning off lights, closing up the castle for the night, and the place grew silent. But still the young preacher knelt in his room and pleaded for the soul of the girl who had plotted to make a fool of him.

  And in another part of the house a girl knelt beside a window looking up to the stars and the clear moonlit sky and prayed for a man who was sailing somewhere off beneath those stars, and her prayer kept time to the tune of her heart as it sang the one word darling.

  Chapter 10

  The great bird set sail into a silver sea, and the heart of the flier was at peace. He laughed aloud as he thought what had come to him. The sacred drops on his brow that morning, that had seemed so mysterious when they were put there, so almost useless; the strange words “Child of God, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” had come to mean something, just with a half hour’s explanation. He was born into a new family now. He had become a child of God!

  He looked down into the silver sea below him and saw the world he had left—twinkling little lights like pinpoints in bunches, those were cities. Great spaces of inky darkness—that was country, with the people all gone to bed. Isolated glowing points—those were landmarks, meant for his guidance.

  All this wide sea of silver blue was before him, endless lovely spaces through which he must go far before he could come again. The exhilaration of flying was in his veins—the feel of the controls, his power over the engine, his ability to do this thing he had set out to do, his confidence in himself and his plane—all were a part of the moment as he realized that the race was really on and that by morning, the world would be standing in wonder, watching to see if he could accomplish it.

  Yet there was something greater than all this, a feeling of sweet awe, that now, come what might, he was safe. If he met God again out there in the silver-blue, he would not be afraid. Whatever happened he was right with God. He might not understand it all, but he believed, and he stood in a new relation to God. Even if he fell, he was in God’s hands and all would be well.

  In his heart, too, nestled a sweet and pleasant thought. A little blue-eyed girl, back several hundred miles, was praying for him. Her voice still lingered in his ears, her voice with her tears in it, as she promised. He was just as sure she would remember as he was sure he was God’s child. She was a stranger only yesterday, but now he stood in a new relationship to her, too. She was praying for him as he flew, and he had called her “darling.” He had not meant to, but he was glad he had. Darling! Darling! Darling! What a sweet word that was. Why had he never before noticed what a wonderful word that was?

  The night wore on and the sea of crystal in which he sailed was clear as a bell. He never had seen the stars so bright. They seemed like nearby windows into another world. He watched them pale as the dawn drew near, and the sea of silver blue changed into coral and green and gold and orchid, as the sun rose and day began.

  Well on in the morning he was reported to have passed over several towns in Ontario, and the papers rushed to set up extra editions and tell the news to the watching world. On and on he rushed, exulting in each mile accomplished. So much nearer the goal, and round to his home again.

  Would she be there, waiting? Would she receive him as a friend after this? She would not be angry at the word darling he had called her. Her voice with the tears in it had not sounded angry. She was the one girl in all the world, the girl he had not dreamed there would be anywhere. Oh, if he had known before there was such a girl, how different he would have been!

  But he was different now. He had been born again! How strange that he had been led to that plain little church, to just the thing he had been longing to find out! “Child of God. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” The drops of water on his brow, like the dew of the morning, he seemed to feel them now, and they were holy, precious!

  At noon an observer sighted him as he passed over a small town not far from Fort Nelson. During the afternoon reports came in from several places, showing that he was going steadily on in the course that had been prescribed, though most of them said that while his engine could be heard, he was too high up for observation. At eight o’clock in the evening the radio broadcasted the fact that he had just been reported as passing over and signaling Fort Resolution.

  The four men in New York sat back in their comfortable chairs with satisfied countenances, and the world held its breath for half a second and listened, exclaiming, and then went on again.

  During the night Gareth’s engine was heard by prospectors along the Yukon, and early in the morning he climbed the air over the city of Dawson and dropped a handful of little flags down.

  It had been the plan of the sponsors of this flight to have Sitka, Alaska, be the first objective, but Gareth had overruled them and chosen Nome as the point where he should refuel and stop for sleep before proceeding to Anadirsk on the coast of Siberia. He wanted to demonstrate the possibility of a nonstop flight between New York and Nome, which no one as yet had tried, and he wanted to cross to Siberia over the Bering Strait, taking the shortest possible course. The Arctic regions lured him and challenged his courage and prowess. He wanted to do something that nobody else had done.

  As he sailed over Dawson he looked down wistfully. He was almost at his first goal, almost ready for the last hard lap of the journey. If he made it as he had planned he would soon be free to go back!

  He was climbing over the Canadian Rockies now, snowcapped and mighty in their splendor. The night was clear, and almost like daylight. In fact, he was coming into the region of the short Arctic summer night, which meant almost constant daylight, and that was a help, of course. He was keeping a steady average now of about one hundred and twelve miles an hour.

  But a new foe began to manifest itself, a deadly sleepiness that attacked him from time to time and threatened to overwhelm him. The little closed cabin in which he must ride seemed drugged with drowsiness, the stars seemed waltzing around in the heavens, his eyelids fell shut of themselves and had to be rubbed open again.

  “Now, my Father, help me,” he prayed. “Don’t let this get me!” And again he found himself repeating, “Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost!”

  It was deadly, this sleep that was coming over him, like a featherbed that enveloped him and choked out all sense. Even the gleaming mountain peaks had faded from his vision. He might run into one and not know it until it was too late. He must do something about this.

  He moved himself about as much as he could and tried to stir up a circulation; he adjusted his ventilators so that there was more air.

  Presently he began to notice something strange about his compass. It was not working right—or was his own brain muddled with this deadly sleep? It seemed that his course had veered from the straight line his instinct taught him was right. Sometimes the nearness of the North Pole did play havoc with a compass needle. But still, if he could not trust his compass, what else was there to do? He certainly could not guide himself through these unknown wastes of air.

  So he held on his way, hour after hour, pinching himself to keep awake, inventing all sorts of tortures to keep the great torture from drawing him into its deadly alluring arms.

  And now by his watch the morning was well on its way, the second morning of his trip, and soon he ought to be nearing Nome. Had he crossed the Yukon River yet? He peered down, but he could not tell. The whole world seemed one mass of white peaks, or was that water far below?

  It was his eyes, of course, that were full of sleep. His eyes that saw fields of snow rolling like billows. Just his eyes, blinded by the long strain and the whiteness and the sunlight. Or was that really water he was over—a wide sea! A horror froze in his throat. Had he missed his way? Was his compass really wrong? And w
as this Alaska Bay he was crossing, or had he come too far north and was this the Arctic Sea?

  By his mileage now he ought to be at Nome, but there was no sign of human habitation. A glance at his compass showed it acting strangely, jumping around like a human thing that had lost its mind. Ah! This deadly cold and this smothering sleep! Why had he ever tried to do this fool thing?

  It was about that time that he suddenly noticed a fine gray mist on his windshield. Was he coming into a storm? No, the barometer showed no change in weather conditions! Yet he could not see now where he was going. He looked about and the fine gray mist was all over on every side, the world outside being gradually obliterated. Was he going blind? He must be cool about this. He must not get excited. Even a blind man might be able to do something about what was happening. There was his wireless, too, and now he noticed he could still see everything inside his cabin with perfectly clear vision. Ah! The trouble was outside. He opened his windshield a little way and the bitter cold rushed in, and the clear bright light of day, and suddenly he knew what was the matter. His oil line had broken! That spelled disaster!

  Was the oil going fast? Could he keep his plane in the air until he was over a safe landing place? It would be a risk of course, for if the oil was gone, the engine would stop.

  He peered out through the open windshield, but there was nothing below him but that wide, heaving blue sea with the white, white mountains floating in it! Were they islands or icebergs? If he only knew where he was!